Phylogeny and biogeography of Arabian populations of the Persian Horned Viper <i>Pseudocerastes persicus</i> (Duméril, Bibron & Duméril, 1854)

<p>The Persian Horned Viper (<i>Pseudocerastes persicus</i>) is distributed from northeast Iraq through the Iranian Plateau to western Pakistan with isolated populations in the Hajar Mountains of south-eastern Arabia. Like the other members of the genus <i>Pseudocerastes</i>, <i>P. persicus</i> is a sit-and-wait ambush feeder with low vagility, a characteristic that often results in high levels of population differentiation. In order to clarify the level of genetic variability, phylogenetic relationships, and biogeography of the Arabian populations of <i>P. persicus</i> we sequenced 597 base pairs of the mitochondrial cytochrome <i>b</i> of four individuals from the Hajar Mountains in south-eastern Arabia and inferred their phylogenetic relationships including 10 samples of <i>P. persicus</i> from Iran and Pakistan, four <i>P. urarachnoides</i> and one <i>P. fieldi</i> downloaded from GenBank. The four Arabian samples are genetically very similar in the gene fragment analysed and are phylogenetically very closely related to populations of <i>P. persicus</i> from coastal south Iran. Biogeographically, it appears that colonisation of the Hajar Mountains by <i>P. persicus</i> took place from Iran very recently, most probably during the last glaciation, when most of the Persian Gulf was above sea level and did not represent a barrier for dispersal.</p

Cryptic diversity in <i>Ptyodactylus</i> (Reptilia: Gekkonidae) from the northern Hajar Mountains of Oman and the United Arab Emirates uncovered by an integrative taxonomic approach - Fig 4

<p><b>Visualization of the climatic space occupied by <i>Ptyodactylus orlovi</i> (1) and <i>Ptyodactylus ruusaljibalicus</i> sp. nov. (2) based on PCA-env (A) and ENFA (B).</b> (A) The niches of both species are displayed on a multi-dimensional scale represented by the first two axes of a principal component analyses (PCA) summarizing the entire study area. (B) The x-axis shows marginality and the y-axis specialization. In both figures the grey shadings reflect the density of the occurrences of each species by cell. The dashed and solid contour lines illustrate, respectively, 50% and 100% of the available background environment. The significance of the equivalency and similarity tests is shown with an asterisc (*).</p

L'ABC della relatività

Tutti sanno che Einstein cambiò un capitolo della storia del pensiero umano quando scoprì la teoria della relatività, ma poci hanno le idee chiare in proposito..

Descriptive statistics for all morphometric variables examined for <i>P</i>. <i>ruusaljibalicus</i> sp. nov. and <i>P</i>. <i>orlovi</i>.

<p>Mean ± Standard Deviation (SD) and range (Min–Max) are given. Abbreviations of characters as explained in the Material and Methods and as in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0180397#pone.0180397.s005" target="_blank">S3 Table</a>.</p

View of the common habitat in the mountainous Ruus al Jibal and general appearance in life of <i>Ptyodactylus ruusaljibalicus</i> sp. nov.

<p>(A) Rocky habitat in the type locality on the 23^rd of April 2013. (B) Holotype of <i>P</i>. <i>ruusaljibalicus</i> <b>sp. nov.</b> (voucher code NHMUK2013.347) including a detail of the cloacal tubercles at the tail base. All photographs taken by Salvador Carranza.</p

Descriptive statistics for all meristic variables examined for <i>P</i>. <i>ruusaljibalicus</i> sp. nov. and <i>P</i>. <i>orlovi</i>.

<p>Mean ± Standard Deviation (SD) and range (Min–Max) are given. Abbreviations of characters as explained in the Material and Methods and as in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0180397#pone.0180397.s005" target="_blank">S3 Table</a>.</p

Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of the climatic space of Oman (grey dots) using 12 BIOCLIM variables.

<p>Dashed lines delimit the climatic clusters that group 10% of the explained variance by PC1 and PC2. Green dots represent the climatic space of protected areas.</p

Number of species displayed in a cumulative way.

<p>Dots represent the years with species descriptions. Dashed lines divide the graph into intervals of 20 years. The last dot includes the species in the process of being described.</p

Map of Oman indicating the sampling effort.

<p>Grids of 10 arc-minutes (~18km) with observations (red dot). Empty grid cells are either due to no observation or no sampling.</p

Physical map of Oman.

<p>Map of Oman showing topographical relief and names of the most relevant toponyms mentioned in this study.</p